Sue Bull, Ballarat
A long campaign by three unions at the University of Ballarat for an enterprise bargaining agreement is coming to a head.
After 19 months of negotiations, a no-holds-barred fight is on for a union-based agreement; management is moving towards ballots of all staff for non-union agreements.
The main target is the National Tertiary Education Union and the key sticking point is salaries. The university's last offer of a 14.7% pay increase for general staff and 16% for academics is well below the 22% or more that the NTEU has won elsewhere.
Ballarat staff have not had a salary increase for all staff since June 2003. The unions struck in October 2004 and again in April. Extensive bans in the second half of 2004 and again this year have not resolved the dispute.
NTEU branch president Jeremy Smith told Green Left Weekly, "We've now placed a ban on student results. It's a drastic step and I wasn't sure that members would vote for it. But in one of our largest meetings, the motion passed unanimously."
Smith said that progress towards an agreement had been good until the last federal election, then management took all offers off the table."Since then", he said, "we've tried everything and now it seems we're in for a full frontal assault on the union's place in the institution".
Bans remain in place and ballots for two non-union agreements are scheduled for early September. Messages of solidarity can be sent to <nteu@ballarat.edu.au> and readers can follow the campaign at <http://www.nteu.org.au/bd/ballarat>.
From Green Left Weekly, July 27, 2005.
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